E3 2014 App Live on PS4, Download Now

It’s almost time for E3, arguably the gaming industry’s biggest annual event. E3 is one of my favorite conferences of the year, but unfortunately it’s not a show most of our fans can attend. This year we thought we’d make it a little easier to get a taste of the experience with our new E3 2014 app on PS4.

Through this app you’ll be able to watch our E3 press conference live from the comfort of your couch (or hammock, if you’re really cool). Once we’ve announced everything at the press conference and the show floor opens on June 10th at 12pm PDT, you’ll be able to check out some screenshots and trailers of the games at our booth. You’ll also see some other things we’ll be unveiling, and an overview of our current and future services, like PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now.

This app isn’t just for browsing though — you can also unlock some perks by using the app. To start, there are gold and silver challenges you can complete in the app that will grant you up to 250 Sony Rewards points – these points will be available to unlock until June 24th. You can get other goodies through the app too, including an Amazon Prime 30-day trial and a Music Unlimited 30-day trial. For the early birds out there, during the show we’ll have 6,000 invites per day for the PlayStation Now Private Beta on PS4, starting June 10th at 12pm PDT. Make sure to log in early to secure your invite!

The E3 2014 app for PS4 is available now, so go download it to be ready to go for our press conference on June 9th at 5:45pm PDT. If you’d like to know more specifics, you can check out this FAQ thread on our PlayStation Forums.

Guys, I’m not usually one to complain, but the PS4 E3 app is a complete embarrassment. The most obvious and glaring issue was the inability to watch the press conference live (from what I have seen literally no one was able to see it). How ridiculous is it that consumers had to leave a proprietary app to watch the conference on third party sites? Inexcusable. Second, the video design is atrocious. Once again, how can HBO, Amazon and Netflix manage to design video streaming services on SONY hardware that work wonderfully when Sony’s own app consists of a link to a browser? Finally, the UI of the whole app is terrible. It suggests use of the touchpad, but it appears arbitrarily implemented. On some screens I can use it, on others not (particularly scrolling through screenshots where it seems the most natural). I was actually pleased with most of the actual conference, though I would have liked to see more AAA releases slated this year. However, this app is so cumbersome and ill conceived that its negative impression will likely outlast any positivity from the conference. The person in charge of its design should face some serious reprimands from the company.

OMG!!! What’s the point of having the PS NOW beta access button? I tried yesterday, at 5 minutes after 12:00 PST and all the access codes for the day had been given out. Then, I sat here waiting for an hour, trying to open the program and click the link immediately at 12:00 PST, and again, all given away! I’ll try again tomorrow, but it’s ridiculous that it takes less than 30 seconds to give away 6,000 codes. Will there be another way to try getting beta access after E3 and before July 31st?

For anyone having issues with a video loading, let it load “fully” until you get the error message and it will count for completion. I was able to watch all game videos except 2 which gave errors, but counted for the reward. Same thing with the Press Conference, except you need to leave the error message on your screen for 30 minutes – When I press the play button for the Press Conference I would get “Content unavailable. We’re sorry, but this video is unavailable on this device” and let it sit for 32 minutes and got credit.

Also, for those having trouble getting the “Open all menus” and “Check out all PS Services” to complete, make sure you do both top and bottom of each page in the Services screen. Example: For PS Store, open the large box on top with “PlayStation Store” and the PS logo in it, then move down and open the smaller box below it that says “Explore”. Each page as you move left or right will have something on top and bottom.

Still waiting for the simple patch to enable Harmony Ultimate compatibility… This should really not be that hard, and it’s gone from an opportunity to demonstrate strong customer support to a clear example of poor service.